Guest Blogger: Made-for-TV Tunes
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Something utterly important to today’s alchemy of popular music occured on September the 8th, 1965. That was the day when the classified ad ran in Variety Magazine to attract what would ultimately become the first musical group crafted specifically for a television audience, a ready-made pop phenomenon known as The Monkees.
The ad read, “seeking four insane boys, age 17-21 for acting roles in a new series.” Hundreds applied, and Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith, and Davy Jones were selected to form a Beatles-lookalike group for a zany television show. The hits were penned by a team of tunesmiths who began churning out sugar-sweet three minute instant pop classics. Instantly blurring the lines of television and musical reality, The Monkees sold 5 million copies of their debut album, and burned up the charts. They would go on to sell more records in 1965 than The Beatles. In 1967, I think they sold more records than The Beatles and The Stones combined. You can bet that those holding their puppet strings were pleased.
Despite the confection, I will confess a certain weakness in my heart towards these television bands of yesteryear. I am only an average woman. I cannot resist the guiles of songs like…
Daydream Believer Daydream Believer - The Monkees
Westerberg covered it
I Think I Love You I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family
Westerberg covered it too
Sugar Sugar Sugar Sugar - The Archies
not Westerberg, but Semisonic + Mary Lou Lord covered it
And yes, I can sing along each words to all of those songs, a holdover from being 11 and fervently riding my bike to softball practice with my huge pastel Walkman and my parent-approved tunes. I had a tough time once junior high started.
So it’s all just fluff and bubblegum delight, and there’s a place for that in my life, but if we’re gonna be honest, that initial classified ad profoundly changed the face of music — and one could argue for the worse. Sometimes I look at the landscape of recent years and find the ideas of everything from “Making The Band” to The Spice Girls to the INXS replace-our-dead-singer-on-television contest to be a bit appalling. Sure, it’s a free market, but it’s also prostituting out music to the highest bidder based on looks and sparkle, and not necessarily the quality of the music. Hey, hey, we’re The Monkees.
[ a debt is owed to the excellent Performing Songwriter magazine for their piece last year called Bands On The Rerun ]
Related Links:
Daily Dose for August 31, 2007
Remember This? Rocklopedia Fakebandica
The Archies were Don Kirshner’s follow up to the Monkee’s, who’s “mutiny” resiulted in Kirshner being fired from the project. The cartoon Archies took direction better than Mike Nesmith…..
A set of studio musicians were assembled by Don Kirshner in 1968 to perform various songs. The most famous is “Sugar, Sugar”, written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, which went to #1 on the pop chart in 1969 and earned the group a gold record (in fact, in Billboard magazine’s Hot 100, it was ranked as the number one song of that year, the only time a fictional band has ever claimed Billboard’s annual Hot 100 top-spot). Other Top Forty songs recorded by The Archies include “Who’s Your Baby?,” “Bang-Shang-A-Lang,” and “Jingle Jangle.”
Male vocals for the fictional Archies group were provided by Ron Dante and female duet vocals were provided by Toni Wine. Wine was succeeded in 1970 by Donna Marie, who in turn was replaced on the final recordings by Merle Miller. The only Archies song not to feature Ron Dante on lead was 1971’s “Love Is Living In You,” sung by Richie Adams. Jeff Barry, Andy Kim, Susan Morse, Joey Levine, Maeretha Stewart, Ellie Greenwich, Bobby Bloom and Leslie Miller contributed background vocals at various times, with Barry contributing his trademark bass voice (portrayed as being sung by Jughead in the cartoon) on cuts such as “Jingle Jangle,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music”, “A Summer Prayer For Peace” (which hit #1 in South Africa in 1971) and “You Little Angel, You.” Musicians on Archies records included guitarist Hugh McCracken, bassists Chuck Rainey and Joey Macho, keyboard player Ron Frangipane and drummers Buddy Saltzman and Gary Chester.
Most of the Archies’ songs were produced, written or co-written by Jeff Barry.
Ron Dante (born Carmine Granito, August 22, 1945, in Staten Island, New York) is an American singer, songwriter and record producer.
Dante is best known as the lead vocalist for the cartoon group The Archies from 1968 to 1971. Their third single, “Sugar, Sugar”, written by producer Jeff Barry with Andy Kim, was the number one selling record of 1969. Prior to his stint with The Archies, in 1965, Dante was a member of the parody group The Detergents, who recorded a song jokingly entitled “Leader of the Laundromat”.
Concurrent with his work on the Archies project, Dante was also employed as a session singer, recording demonstration records, and also sang many television and commercial jingles.
In 1969, Ron recorded an album under the group name of The Cufflinks for his old Detergents songwriter-producers Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss. Providing both lead and background vocals through overdubbing (as he did with most of the male Archies’ vocals) Dante hit the U.S. Top Ten with the single “Tracy”, at the same time that The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” was at the top spot on the same chart. (Dante was anonymous on both tracks, as with all Archies and Cufflinks recordings).
September 4th, 2007 at 9:41 am